Go-to-Customer Challenges in Commercial Banking Segments
Survey findings for initiatives in commercial and business banking.
Alexander Group recently surveyed 50 C-Suite and Sales & Marketing executives in the commercial and business banking industries to gain their perspectives on the top go-to-market initiatives for the second half of 2022. Deployment of relationship managers in the field, sales process, support team strategies, revenue operations and seller performance expectations, were identified as the main challenges.
1. Increase Revenue Growth
Despite the pandemic, commercial and business banking leaders saw strong growth in 2021. Banks are even more bullish for 2022, expecting increased double-digit revenue growth. 75% of survey respondents indicated that maximizing customer retention to reduce churn is the leading go-to-market strategy. Slightly behind at 68% is new customer acquisition. This puts pressure on the go-to-market organization to focus on retaining and growing market share in a competitive environment.
2. Focus on Sales Enablement, Process and Value Propositions
Due to competition in the banking industry, leaders stated that the lack of sales enablement tools or technology along with the lack of strong value proposition and staving off competitors are the top go-to-market challenges. Understanding and prioritizing prospects by means of market segmentation and targeting was also highly ranked. Using revenue operations to fine-tune the commercial model to have a defined process, CRM discipline and value messaging are keys to seller enablement.
3. Deploying Product Specialists and Inside Selling/Marketing Roles
Respondents show a growing interest in product specialists and inside selling/marketing roles; however, more investment is still allocated to traditional relationship manager-type roles. Deploying specialists can assist with customer retention, cross-selling and upselling strategies while inside sales has shown to be successful through learnings stemming from the pandemic.
4. Performance Expectations are $5-8M in Revenue Per Core Seller
The particular performance expectations will depend on the bank’s maturation in the marketplace. 80% of respondents are averaging 10% of revenue to sales expense. Only 6% of revenue is being allocated to marketing. Banks may need to consider investment in new coverage models such as: new specialist roles, sales operations professionals, customer success managers, increase in marketing functions for lead generation, marketing automation and new analytics.
In the following video, Dave Eddleman, principal and Banking practice lead at Alexander Group, discusses the banking survey findings and Alexander Group’s solutions to assist with go-to-market challenges.
